About fruit bats and mojitos

So I might be fast approaching 40 but my mum still likes to know what I’m up to. What with me heading off, leaving on a jet plane for a year around the world (ON YOUR OWN she would add), I figured sharing my adventures here would be a good way to keep in touch with family back home and maybe any friends I make along the way.

I have decided to travel alone as I want to leave, temporarily, my old world in the UK and immerse myself as best I can in the countries I will be visiting. That does present the prospect of missing out on the fun of sharing sights, tastes, sounds and experiences good and bad. This blog is, in part, a way of ensuring that I’ll always have someone to share my adventures with.

Rather than a rambling monologue, my hope is that this becomes a conversation. I would love to hear your suggestions for things to do in the countries I’ll be visiting*, and I am always up for meeting like-minded souls around the world for a coffee – or a mojito.

If I were as brave as I’d like to be, I wouldn’t have pre-booked quite so much of my trip as I have. The romantic notion of turning up at the airport – passport in hand, reading the departure board to pick a location that sounds exciting and full of promise – is just a little too scary for now. Plus I’d have missed out on the last 6 months of imagining the possibilities. Half of the fun is in the planning.

But never say never and I expect that over the course of the year, as my confidence grows, my plans will evolve. Maybe I’ll be seeing in the New Year from Beijing rather than Sydney.

I’m aiming to travel light, by necessity. A month of personal training hasn’t made up for the 15 years I was sitting at a desk for anything up to 12 hours a day. There’s a real risk of me doing a “human tortoise beached on its shell, little legs waggling in the air” impression with my backpack if I pack one t-shirt too many.

Whilst it’s impossible to tell which moments on my travels will become my favourites, I am especially looking forward to taking a boat into the Amazon jungle, which I’ve saved til the end of my trip. And I’m starting with the country that has drawn me in with tales of salsa and fine mojitos, Cuba.

I hope to post stories, photos and maybe the odd video on a fairly regular basis. That said, as my main intention is to connect with the people and experiences around me, I do intend to keep my time on the internet to a minimum. Indeed in many places I don’t expect I’ll even have the choice. So if I go quiet one week rest assured it just means I’m deep in the jungle, whizzing down a zip line, and I’ve left my laptop back in the city.